I was able to repurpose an existing computer now running headless in text console mode only with two new AMD Radeon HD5830's cards over clocked to 875MHz. The GPUs are running at a stable 86 degrees Celsius and average 519 Mhash/s between the two HD5830's.

*** Warning this may cause irreparable damage to your computer system, harm yourself and your family, burn down your house, neighborhood and city, generate untold amounts of carbon dioxide at your electric company and harm the polar bears and baby seals in the Arctic Circle. I am NOT responsible if you try this or for any errors that may exist within this post.

Load a fresh Ubuntu Natty 11.04 64-bit Desktop with the latest updates and log into system with a user that has sudo permissions. sudo apt-get remove nvidia-common sudo apt-get install libqtgui4

# ${1} is used as a variable for the username, password and for the gpu device number. Ex. mineruser0, minerpass0, Device=0 or mineruser1, minerpass1, Device=1 HOMEDIR=/home/user MINERSERV=btcmine.com:8332 MINERUSER=mineruser@miner${1} MINERPASS=minerpass${1}

I have a much simpler setup, but I am mining headless successfully (no monitor, keyboard, or mouse plugged in at all). What I can't do is aticonfig. It complains about X not running. Do I have to hack up the /etc/init scripts to get X running without a monitor plugged in?

I have a much simpler setup, but I am mining headless successfully (no monitor, keyboard, or mouse plugged in at all). What I can't do is aticonfig. It complains about X not running. Do I have to hack up the /etc/init scripts to get X running without a monitor plugged in?

I have a much simpler setup, but I am mining headless successfully (no monitor, keyboard, or mouse plugged in at all). What I can't do is aticonfig. It complains about X not running. Do I have to hack up the /etc/init scripts to get X running without a monitor plugged in?

Hi Syke,

You are able to mine without running X Windows? I was not able to run atiConfig or mining without X running. If you want to start X you should be able to do it through a small script in /etc/init or in one of the /etc/rc scripts. You will need to set the DISPLAY=:0 command if you are remote and also you may need to run sudo aticonfig since X will be owned by root once it starts.

- Dukejer

If you find this post helpful feel free to donate to address: 19oQLN2v1auiGqBDFfxSDUfu8Ax6ooT6xs

Well I guess my problem isn't due to running headless. When I boot with a monitor and see X (Ubuntu Desktop 10.10) up and running, I still can't aticonfig over ssh. The three lines didn't help either.

Hi Syke,

Did you try this from ssh?

DISPLAY=:0 sudo aticonfig --odgt --adapter=all

This is what I use. You may need to be logged into X for this to work. If you are still running the desktop try and have gdm autologin your user under the console. You can set up autologin for Ubuntu under System -> Administration -> Login Screen.

- Dukejer

If you find this post helpful feel free to donate to address: 19oQLN2v1auiGqBDFfxSDUfu8Ax6ooT6xs

I made one minor change in the overclocking. I forgot to show how to enable overclocking first in aticonf.Here are the changes. If anyone sees any other errors please let me know and I will update the main post.

We found some cut and paste errors in my original script when I was writing the post. Some of the lines with the "--" dash dash symbol were being substituted with a long hyphen instead. You will probably have to run the following lines below to correct it.

I did not have much luck running screen as a normal user since the tty devices are created on demand now with udev even though I put my normal user in the tty group. I normally run screen using sudo so that the super user will create the devices and then I can connect to the screen instance. The only problem is that when I want to reconnect I also have to do a sudo screen. The /usr/local/bin/startminer.sh script I created in the top post can be ran without overclocking. You can just leave out the aticonfig lines from the script that are used for overclocking.

jeez, just stay with Debian sid[this time, codenamed "Wheezy"], if you need power of Debian w/o Ubuntu bugs.stay away from crippled forks such as "xbuntu" crap, IMO.

Hi Basiley,

I have used every Linux distribution from Yggdrasil, Slackware, Caldera, Redhat, Suse, Gento, Debian, etc. Ubuntu works fine for me. Seems polished just enough compared to other distributions I have used in the past. I think with a little debugging I could fix the udev issues with probably writing a udev script or some other fix but since I already have my rig autostarting in a headless configuration I have not delved into it to much. Also taking down my rig for a bit feels like I am waisting bitcoins.

- Dukejer

If you find this post helpful feel free to donate to address: 19oQLN2v1auiGqBDFfxSDUfu8Ax6ooT6xs